9 ms·

> Yes but my personal choice is limited because the government refuses to step in. Wow. Do you really believe that it's government job to guarantee ad-free Ech

by kk_cz 9y ago

> Yes but my personal choice is limited because the government refuses to step in. Wow. Do you really believe that it's government job to guarantee ad-free Echo?

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
That's not exactly how I would phrase it but basically. I mean you would agree that a bunch of people could organize a boycott of Echo with ads and eventually Amazon would stop selling it and sell Echo without ads and that would be fine right? So why don't we just do that? It's because we lack a coordination mechanism, the incentive of individual boycotters is to cheat. Luckily humans have developed a great coordination mechanism called 'democracy' and we can use it when coordination in the market place has failed.
- dbmikus 9y ago
  Or someone can make another audio-controlled device that doesn't sell ads and that can be a separate company. I don't see why you would immediately go towards having the government step in and regulate whether Amazon can make the Echo prefer their own products quite yet. It's still a new device and there are some other competitors. I could agree that companies be required to have a disclaimer when they provide preference to a certain product set over another.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    >Or someone can make another audio-controlled device that doesn't sell ads and that can be a separate company. Sure, that's one possibility. Probably not a very realistic one but it's there. >I don't see why you would immediately go towards having the government step in and regulate whether Amazon can make the Echo prefer their own products quite yet. Why should we immediately go towards another company/market-oriented solution? What is it about government that requires we wait around for the market to fail? Why not just go do what we want?
    - hutzlibu 9y ago
      "Why not just go do what we want?" We can. We do. Most people don't care about beeing spied on, so they buy it. So they also would not support your democracy introduced market improvement. Besides, a market can't regulate itself, if there is allways a government regulation in case something is not nice. And I do actually believe, people would buy the adfree, non spying device, if they would have a choice So that's simply a market opportunity.
- JonFish85 9y ago
  >"Luckily humans have developed a great coordination mechanism called 'democracy' and we can use it when coordination in the market place has failed." I find that sort of thinking pretty scary. I'm incredibly hesitant to expand the purview of the government into whether products should succeed or fail. It sounds like what you're saying is that people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, so we should enact government regulations to think for them. This is something markets are very good at, as others have stated. Expanding the government's role in things should be an absolute last resort, to me. If people are willing to trade their personal information for cheap, cool gadgets, then who is the government to step in to say "no, you're not allowed to do that"? By the same token, you could flip it around: could the government step in and say "you don't want this gadget that's always listening to you, but you have to have it because some group you don't agree with tells you to"? I want to be careful not to go too slippery slope, but should the government step in and shut down Google, because they exist to serve ads? What about Facebook? It's the same thing there: people trade their personal information for perceived value in other places (Facebook: keeping in touch with people, Google as access to information). Should the government be the ones to decide who should be allowed to make decisions about their information? It's scary because once the government gets to decide what people should and shouldn't be allowed to use, or what products should or shouldn't succeed, it can be used as an incredibly powerful tool. To me, a useful way to think of government is as a very sharp knife: it can be extremely useful in the right situations, but you can really hurt yourself if you're not careful.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Government has been doing this for a long time already. To see it in action, just try to buy some thalidomide, or book a flight with an airline that only requires 20 hours of training for their pilots, or buy a new car with no air bags. The question of whether the government should decide what people should be allowed to use or what products should succeed was answered a long time ago with “yes, it should.” The only question here is what side of the line this particular product falls on.
  - 9y ago
- kk_cz 9y ago
  > I mean you would agree that a bunch of people could organize a boycott of Echo with ads. Yes I would. I don't see why you need to "organize" it though. I don't need any form of organization to not use product I don't like. > It's because we lack a coordination mechanism, the incentive of individual boycotters is to cheat. You lost me here. You have internet full of coordination tools if you really feel like boycott of echo should be coordinated, just set up a fb group :).
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    >You lost me here. You have internet full of coordination tools if you really feel like boycott of echo should be coordinated, just set up a fb group :). Boycotts are basically ineffective, especially the social media kind.[1] Why are unions effective at coordinating? Because there's a punishment if you don't coordinate (you have to leave.) Why are elections effective at coordinating? Because everyone reveals their preference all at once anonymously and the collective decision is binding. Why do I and my coworkers coordinate? Because I have a supervisor who will fire me if I screw up. In this way I see your point is that we should only use coordination mechanisms which are basically ineffective. As soon as we approach a coordination mechanism which is effective (government) you start to condemn it. [1] http://i.imgur.com/MLZ0bMu.png http://i.imgur.com/MLZ0bMu.png
    - tinymollusk 9y ago
      My problem with government intervention isn't the "inefficiency" myth. Like most large complex entities referred to in the aggregate abstract, they do some things well and some poorly. My concern with gov't action is the second and third order effects. Governments are implemented primarily by bureaucrats, whose primary incentive is to maintain their job. Any policy that gets implemented poorly (inefficiently), tends to continue because of the employees personal incentives. This suggests, to me, that governments (as they are in America today) should not be experimenting. Culling the losers is super important for exploration, and probably the thing our local/state/federal gov't is worst at. (If a company makes repeatedly poor decisions, they will tend towards insolvency/change in management.)
    - 9y ago
- RussianCow 9y ago
  You're making the huge assumption that the majority of people strongly want an ad-free Echo. My guess is that most people don't care either way.
eropple 9y ago
We all benefit from a society that is not pumped full of willpower-draining advertisement. So, yes, we as people, as citizens, and as a society, through the collective apparatus we call "government", can and should step on advertising quite strongly to help us as people, as citizens, and as a society recover from the onslaught of the last few decades. This is but one way.
- kk_cz 9y ago
  We can talk about advertisment in general. But in this instance OP literally wrote that his choice is limited to "echo with ads" or "no echo at all", because goverment is refusing to step in. I was not questioning whether the advertising industry is good or not, but rather OP's notion that he is entitled to ad-free echo service. I agree that advertisment should be more heavily controlled in instances where people don't have a choice whether to see the advertisment or not. But nobody is forcing anyone to buy a device that is known to serve you ads. If enough people will make this choice, the business incentive for the producer of the device will disappear and so will the device.
  - eropple 9y ago
    Collective action problems don't get solved. The market very rarely speaks. Government exists to curb abuses.

by kk_cz 9y ago

> Yes but my personal choice is limited because the government refuses to step in. Wow. Do you really believe that it's government job to guarantee ad-free Echo?

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

That's not exactly how I would phrase it but basically. I mean you would agree that a bunch of people could organize a boycott of Echo with ads and eventually Amazon would stop selling it and sell Echo without ads and that would be fine right? So why don't we just do that? It's because we lack a coordination mechanism, the incentive of individual boycotters is to cheat. Luckily humans have developed a great coordination mechanism called 'democracy' and we can use it when coordination in the market place has failed.

dbmikus 9y ago
Or someone can make another audio-controlled device that doesn't sell ads and that can be a separate company. I don't see why you would immediately go towards having the government step in and regulate whether Amazon can make the Echo prefer their own products quite yet. It's still a new device and there are some other competitors. I could agree that companies be required to have a disclaimer when they provide preference to a certain product set over another.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >Or someone can make another audio-controlled device that doesn't sell ads and that can be a separate company. Sure, that's one possibility. Probably not a very realistic one but it's there. >I don't see why you would immediately go towards having the government step in and regulate whether Amazon can make the Echo prefer their own products quite yet. Why should we immediately go towards another company/market-oriented solution? What is it about government that requires we wait around for the market to fail? Why not just go do what we want?
  - hutzlibu 9y ago
    "Why not just go do what we want?" We can. We do. Most people don't care about beeing spied on, so they buy it. So they also would not support your democracy introduced market improvement. Besides, a market can't regulate itself, if there is allways a government regulation in case something is not nice. And I do actually believe, people would buy the adfree, non spying device, if they would have a choice So that's simply a market opportunity.
JonFish85 9y ago
>"Luckily humans have developed a great coordination mechanism called 'democracy' and we can use it when coordination in the market place has failed." I find that sort of thinking pretty scary. I'm incredibly hesitant to expand the purview of the government into whether products should succeed or fail. It sounds like what you're saying is that people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, so we should enact government regulations to think for them. This is something markets are very good at, as others have stated. Expanding the government's role in things should be an absolute last resort, to me. If people are willing to trade their personal information for cheap, cool gadgets, then who is the government to step in to say "no, you're not allowed to do that"? By the same token, you could flip it around: could the government step in and say "you don't want this gadget that's always listening to you, but you have to have it because some group you don't agree with tells you to"? I want to be careful not to go too slippery slope, but should the government step in and shut down Google, because they exist to serve ads? What about Facebook? It's the same thing there: people trade their personal information for perceived value in other places (Facebook: keeping in touch with people, Google as access to information). Should the government be the ones to decide who should be allowed to make decisions about their information? It's scary because once the government gets to decide what people should and shouldn't be allowed to use, or what products should or shouldn't succeed, it can be used as an incredibly powerful tool. To me, a useful way to think of government is as a very sharp knife: it can be extremely useful in the right situations, but you can really hurt yourself if you're not careful.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeash 9y ago
  Government has been doing this for a long time already. To see it in action, just try to buy some thalidomide, or book a flight with an airline that only requires 20 hours of training for their pilots, or buy a new car with no air bags. The question of whether the government should decide what people should be allowed to use or what products should succeed was answered a long time ago with “yes, it should.” The only question here is what side of the line this particular product falls on.
- 9y ago
kk_cz 9y ago
> I mean you would agree that a bunch of people could organize a boycott of Echo with ads. Yes I would. I don't see why you need to "organize" it though. I don't need any form of organization to not use product I don't like. > It's because we lack a coordination mechanism, the incentive of individual boycotters is to cheat. You lost me here. You have internet full of coordination tools if you really feel like boycott of echo should be coordinated, just set up a fb group :).
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >You lost me here. You have internet full of coordination tools if you really feel like boycott of echo should be coordinated, just set up a fb group :). Boycotts are basically ineffective, especially the social media kind.[1] Why are unions effective at coordinating? Because there's a punishment if you don't coordinate (you have to leave.) Why are elections effective at coordinating? Because everyone reveals their preference all at once anonymously and the collective decision is binding. Why do I and my coworkers coordinate? Because I have a supervisor who will fire me if I screw up. In this way I see your point is that we should only use coordination mechanisms which are basically ineffective. As soon as we approach a coordination mechanism which is effective (government) you start to condemn it. [1] http://i.imgur.com/MLZ0bMu.png http://i.imgur.com/MLZ0bMu.png
  - tinymollusk 9y ago
    My problem with government intervention isn't the "inefficiency" myth. Like most large complex entities referred to in the aggregate abstract, they do some things well and some poorly. My concern with gov't action is the second and third order effects. Governments are implemented primarily by bureaucrats, whose primary incentive is to maintain their job. Any policy that gets implemented poorly (inefficiently), tends to continue because of the employees personal incentives. This suggests, to me, that governments (as they are in America today) should not be experimenting. Culling the losers is super important for exploration, and probably the thing our local/state/federal gov't is worst at. (If a company makes repeatedly poor decisions, they will tend towards insolvency/change in management.)
  - 9y ago
RussianCow 9y ago
You're making the huge assumption that the majority of people strongly want an ad-free Echo. My guess is that most people don't care either way.

eropple 9y ago

We all benefit from a society that is not pumped full of willpower-draining advertisement. So, yes, we as people, as citizens, and as a society, through the collective apparatus we call "government", can and should step on advertising quite strongly to help us as people, as citizens, and as a society recover from the onslaught of the last few decades. This is but one way.

kk_cz 9y ago
We can talk about advertisment in general. But in this instance OP literally wrote that his choice is limited to "echo with ads" or "no echo at all", because goverment is refusing to step in. I was not questioning whether the advertising industry is good or not, but rather OP's notion that he is entitled to ad-free echo service. I agree that advertisment should be more heavily controlled in instances where people don't have a choice whether to see the advertisment or not. But nobody is forcing anyone to buy a device that is known to serve you ads. If enough people will make this choice, the business incentive for the producer of the device will disappear and so will the device.
- eropple 9y ago
  Collective action problems don't get solved. The market very rarely speaks. Government exists to curb abuses.